"We make allowance for a certain degree of selfishness in men; because we know it to be inseparable from human nature, and inherent in our frame and constitution."

"To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential step towards being a true philosopher."

"Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them."

"I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites."

"Liberty, according to the most common acceptation of the word, is an entire absence of all external impediments of motion."